On Joan Didion & Grieving a Stranger

Last week, I wept outside Dudley’s Market in Venice. Martha texted me the news: Eve Babitz was gone. The tears slid down my cheeks prettily and didn’t run my mascara; it was a cathartic, pure kind of crying I’ve lately mastered. It wasn’t a shock; she never seemed to recover from the 1997 incident (there was a dress, it caught fire), and by her own admission lived pill to pill and bottle to mouth for many years (what we then called a “fast life,” and now might be considered a problem). If even half her documented substance consumption is accurate, then she had all the restraint of a wrecking ball and we were lucky to have her as long as we did. Still, I wept and thanked God there was still one last west coast deity standing.

But there’s nothing God loves more than fucking me over.

Today 9:40 AM 

Martha Ruby: JOAN DIDION DIED

Me: I CANNOT HANDLE THIS TODAY 

MY HEROES IN ONE WEEK I CANNOT HANDLE THIS

Martha Ruby: That’s so us of them

Me: Truly

Two California writers said goodbye within a week

Martha Ruby: They said I will not do omicron bye

Me: They said…with all due respect…no

Maybe I had spent all my tears on Eve Babitz, or I simply refused to believe it was true, but I shed no tears for Joan Didion. It’s for the best, I think; she would have found parasocial relationships so gauche. And I’m certainly not alone in grieving her; her influence so far-reaching and diverse, I can hardly explain what she has meant to me, and writers like me. I hear imitations, poor echoes of her genius in her obituaries. I feel her hand as I remember her clever turns of phrase, the ease with which she pulls you in, carefully balancing transparency and omission, a talent I’ve attempted to counterfeit for half a decade.

If I ever, at any point in time, write half as well as Joan Didion, I will put down the pen and die peacefully. I would write about myself, but in an efficient, incisive way that found time to paint the desert, name the color of the sky, and communicate invaluable truths about America.

I remember when the news declared Biden the next President of the United States, Martha and I hopped on the Red Line to Hollywood to get tattoos from whichever walk-in parlor had first availability. In the train car, we brainstormed ideas—she decided on a smiley-face while I looked up the dominating Joan Didion typeface. I had already decided on “Democracy”, her 1984 Vietnam-Era political romance novel; its title, dripping with suitable irony, seemed fitting of the reluctant victory of 2020, and has my favorite bit of dialogue maybe ever.

Jack Lovett, after a long monologue about nuclear tests in the middle of the Pacific, looks down at the woman he’s loved for over twenty years and says, “Oh shit, Inez. Harry Victor’s wife,” in much the same tone as, “We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce,” from The White Album (I am not convinced that Hawaii hasn’t done more for the state of American marriages than a great many therapists). Despite eschewing romantic fantasies, she was married for thirty-nine years to John Gregory Dunne and wrote a book about her grief in the wake of his death.

Her New York Times obituary lifted a quote from Where I Was From: “You were meant, if you were a Californian, to know how how to lash together a corral with bark, you were meant to show spirit, kill the rattlesnake, keep moving.” From this line alone it seems inevitable that Didion would one day make Manhattan her bitch—one of the few whose loyalties seemed truly split between the coasts. Only she could strike such a balance between heart and mind; form and improvisation; pragmatism and hope; pleasure and work; America and Not America. It seems fitting that she’d be born in California but die in Manhattan.

Still, when I think of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, I think of Los Angeles. There is Hollywood, and then there’s Eve’s Hollywood, just like there are two Californias: the first belonging to Joan Didion and the other shared by everybody else. And I wonder what will become of the Golden State now that her great historians have passed. 

In some childish way, I liked occupying the same world as Joan Didion. I liked to imagine we’ve seen the same films, kept up with the same kinds of literature, driven the same bends of LA. It’s for that small sliver of life that I grieve for. I grieve for her next unpenned novel and the goodbye letter we’ll never receive. In a perfect world, she wrote her own obituary. I grieve for the Joan Didion of tomorrow, the post-modern elderly woman, the one who still knows everything. The fantasy figure whose life looks something like mine.

In my wildest dreams, Joan Didion is photographed holding her iPhone 11. I like to imagine she’s checking her Spotify Wrapped or smoking in crocs. Joan Didion cruising in the newest Last Resort ABs. Joan Didion covering the Reputation tour. Joan Didion on the 217 to Hollywood in a cashmere sweater. Joan Didion on Billy on the Street. Joan Didion on a New York Times culture podcast. Joan Didion on Witch-Tok. Joan Didion practices transcendental meditation. Joan Didion dyes her hair pink and listens to Fiona Apple. Joan Didion has a boyfriend. Joan Didion is Interested in Polyamory, says The Cut. Joan Didion is aware of Machine Gun Kelly. Joan Didion writes a profile on Petra Collins in which Olivia Rodrigo makes a cameo. Joan Didion Googles herself. Joan Didion Googles her late husband. 

A friend of mine posted one of the best quotes from Play It as It Lays, “Everything goes. I am working very hard at not thinking about how everything goes.” Meanwhile, I am working at not thinking about how everything went.

A text exchange between Jeff and me at 11:45 AM:

Me: Joan Didion just died

Jeff: oh no

I’m so sorry

Me: I’m so sad

They couldn’t have held on a little longer,

Jeff: What are the odds

I’m sorry Rebecca

Me: Issok

I’m writing again

Jeff: That’s good

Joan didion was really prett

Pretty

You look like her